Mick Cleary: Why I love South African rugby

The Ireland-Springbok script - in essence, baddies against goodies - is a trope that needs revision and contextualising. 

South Africa captain Francois Pienaar receives the Rugby World Cup trophy from president Nelson
Mandela, wearing a Springboks jersey, after their victory over New Zealand on June 24, 1995. Pic: Ross Setford/AP

IT PAYS not to typecast South Africa. About a year before the country staged what was to become one of the seminal tournaments in World Cup history, the Nelson Mandela Rainbow Nation, low-flying Boeing 747 of 1995, Louis Luyt, the capo di capi of South African rugby, fronted a press conference at Heathrow to field questions about the upcoming event.

Not surprisingly, security was a major talking point, with fears that such was the crime rate in the country, South Africa was not fit to host such a showpiece spectacle. 

Luyt peered down at his interrogators and in his gravelly, beady-eyed manner, asked if the perpetrators of the IRA-suspected bomb that had gone off in London a few days earlier had yet been brought to book. Touché.

As it turned out, there were some low-level crime issues (and if anyone still has the Tandy laptop that was stolen from the back of my hire car they are welcome to keep it) but it was all off-set by the joy and theatre and coming together of a troubled nation only three years after their re-admittance to the rugby fold.

And what now of the Springboks as they prepare to take on Ireland in what promises to be a pool-defining match in Paris tomorrow night? 

The beasts of burden up against a well-honed, layered side intent on shedding their World Cup hoodoo with a gun-to-tape tournament to remember?

That may be the script for some people — in essence, baddies against goodies. That trope needs revision and contextualising.

South Africa are more than great lumps of muscle and bone, albeit as anyone who has ever worked their way through the stadium-ringed braais at King’s Park in Durban can tell you, those Bokke behemoths, in khaki shorts and with reddening thighs, are indicative of a huge race.

Think Kobus Wiese or Bakkies Botha or the currently injured Eben Etzebeth, or even the likes of Danie Gerber or Ray Mordt or Damian de Allende in the back-line.

But as with Luyt, there is another perspective to be had. The one that cherishes the speed and trickery and individualism of a Chester Williams or Bryan Habana or Cheslin Kolbe, Kurt-Lee Arendse, and Damian Williams of this generation. 

South Africa have as many, if not more, strike options than Ireland or even France. They are multi-faceted in their rugby as they are these days in the make-up of their team.

We yearned for the Rainbow Nation myth to be true. But, of course, in sport as in politics, appearances are rarely reliable and change — proper, deep-rooted, genuine change — takes time. Much as the quota system has aroused ire and resentment down the years, it was a necessary step towards a recognition of the inequality of opportunity. 

One of the great things about the Springboks’ presence at this World Cup is that the racial make-up of the team is not mentioned, not through ignorance but through a long-awaited acceptance of the new reality.

SOUTH AFRICA has always been an intoxicating country for those of us fortunate to have travelled there, a challenging place for sure, but also one that can exert a magnetic hold. My first visit there was with England in 1994. 

Mandela had just been elected president and the first Test against the Springboks was at Loftus Versfeld in the heart of Afrikaner land in Pretoria.

There were several old South African flags flying in the packed stands. The atmosphere was charged as Mandela emerged to meet the teams.

You sensed the mood could have gone either way. There was something of a pregnant pause as his distinctive domed close-cropped head first appeared down the tunnel. Jeers or cheers? Cheers all the way. It was quite a moment.

It has taken various iterations to get to this point, from the one-eyed violence of Corne Krige’s Springboks in 2002 and the ruinous, laughable privations of Rudi Straeuli’s Kamp Staaldraad boot camp to end all boot camps that took place prior to the World Cup the following year.

So, yes, it is easy to depict South Africans as one-eyed, power-obsessed, laager-fixated bruisers. Yet, for me, there has been no more mesmerising place to visit. Its people are varied and opinionated yet polite and welcoming.

They may project as strong-minded and wilful but humility is at the core of their being, or certainly of this generation. They know they have had to strive for everything, that nothing is a given, literally so in the case of several of their players who have come from abject poverty, all encapsulated in the charismatic figure of their captain, Siya Kolisi.

How many other Test captains are caught singing as they wait to lead their side out onto the field? Not sure it was ever Martin Johnson’s schtick. Of course, it is not all happy-clappy. 

Rassie Erasmus prefers the Great Disruptor role, be it his refereeing rants, traffic light messaging, bomb squads, four scrum-halves, or fly-half replacement for an injured hooker. 

It would be tempting to depict Erasmus as one of those old-school South Africans — nobody likes us but we don’t care, all that Millwall sort of stuff — but it would be wrong. There is a vulnerability in there, too; a sensitivity, as he showed when at Munster. 

Rugby, is at his core, as it is with this squad. There is a bond there, a sense of unity and collective purpose, that is not easily broken.

The day before the World Cup final in Japan four years ago I bumped into an old contact, one well-versed in South African as well as European rugby. The mood music in Tokyo was all of an English beat and why wouldn’t it be given their demolition job on New Zealand in the semi-final?

“Be careful,” counselled my friend. “I’ve been in camp and have had all sorts of messages from back in South Africa. This means everything to them.”

It did then and it appears it does again. You don’t have to love them (although I have no qualms in admitting my crush) but you do have to admire them.